1368777 - Blog home page does not link to Firefox Frontier

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Infrastructure & Operations :: Blogs, task)

Description

[Justin Crawford [:hoosteeno] [:jcrawford]]

One critical aspect of search optimization is linking to subpages from the top level of a website. On blog.mozilla.org, there are no links to the Firefox Frontier, our new Firefox marketing blog. We should create links there. 

Suggestions/ideas:

1) Could we structure the front page logic to _always_ show one recent Frontier post in the list of posts on the blog landing page?
2) Can we include Frontier posts in the categories dropdown? @frios, what category describes the Frontier?
3) Can we include Frontier posts in the tag list pages? (here is a Frontier post tagged "mozilla", which does not appear in the mozilla tag list page: https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/tag/mozilla/)
4) Can we link to the Frontier from the Explore section?

This bug may be repurposed as a tracking bug for some/all of the above.

Comment 1

[Craig Cook (:craigcook)]

(In reply to Justin Crawford [:hoosteeno] [:jcrawford] from comment #0)
 
Each blog, including the main blog, is self-contained and only shows its own content. The front page isn't an aggregator, it's just the front page of that one blog. Unless you're asking about syndicating and/or cross-posting the same content from Firefox Frontier on the main blog as well? That might be possible but we should avoid that kind of duplication (frowned upon by The Goog, and might defeat the purpose of having a separate Firefox blog anyway). 

Instead, we could perhaps start doing short posts on the main blog that promote posts on Firefox Frontier. Just a brief (and unique) blurb and a link, not repeating the full post. "Look at this cool new thing about Firefox, go here to read more about it." That would help drive both traffic and googlejuice without duplication. 


> 1) Could we structure the front page logic to _always_ show one recent
> Frontier post in the list of posts on the blog landing page?

The front page just shows the 12 most recent posts by date. If we start publishing Firefox promo posts on the main blog they'll just be part of the regular time stream and would fall off naturally behind newer content. If you're posting pretty regularly there will probably always be one in those 12 most recent. You can make a "sticky" post that remains at the top even when new posts are published, but we should use that sparingly.


> 2) Can we include Frontier posts in the categories dropdown? @frios, what
> category describes the Frontier?

That dropdown shows only the current blog's categories. It's the five most recent posts in the eight most "populous" categories (those with the most posts). There's already a Firefox category, currently number 2 in the list, so I would expect Frontier promo posts to go in that category.


> 3) Can we include Frontier posts in the tag list pages? (here is a Frontier
> post tagged "mozilla", which does not appear in the mozilla tag list page:
> https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/tag/mozilla/)

Tags are like categories: it's only the content from that specific blog, not aggregated. Frontier promo posts could be tagged accordingly.


> 4) Can we link to the Frontier from the Explore section?

This is an easy one. I've added Firefox Frontier to the sidebar on the main blog and a few others (internetcitizen, netpolicy, opendesign).

Comment 2

[Justin Crawford [:hoosteeno] [:jcrawford]]

Thanks for the great explanation and for solving #4.

* Do you think there is anything unexpected for users about the architecture you describe? For me, it was totally not clear that this was an individual blog called the Mozilla blog, and not the aggregated home page of Mozilla blogs.

* Shouldn't there be an aggregated home page for Mozilla blogs? This would serve the occasional (or maybe frequent, who knows) user who wonders what is going on in the entire universe of Mozilla blogs, and it would also help search engines discover and index content that may be entirely hidden from them if they don't know the blog name, as in the case of the Frontier.

* If there was an aggregated home page for Mozilla blogs, wouldn't it go at blog.mozilla.org/?

I'll call this Resolved, but I sure am interested in your thoughts on the above.

Comment 3

[Craig Cook (:craigcook)]

We have planet.mozilla.org as an all-things-Mozilla blog aggregator, but that site can be really hard to digest for casual readers.

At various times over the years there have been efforts to consolidate into fewer blogs and it's usually met with some resistance. Some people and teams like to keep their own separate blogs, and different blogs serve different audiences. The main Mozilla blog acts as the main public communications channel, so it has the broadest audience and arguably the broadest reach. 

I do think we could make better use of the main blog to help promote some of the more specialized niche blogs. Perhaps we could create a custom post type for these "elsewhere" promo posts that would be distinct from regular blog posts. That way they could appear in the sidebar or somewhere else on the page and wouldn't get mixed into the main stream of posts.